As long as he is earning the slow trots to first, Los Angeles Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy knows the slow trots around all four bases will come soon enough.
Muncy got off to a very slow start this season. During the team’s six games in March, he posted a slash line of .095/.208/.143, with just 2 hits and 3 walks in 21 at-bats, striking out 10 times.
April didn’t start off much better. Although Muncy did have 7 hits in 28 at-bats through the first eight games of the month, raising his batting average to .184, he did not draw a single base on balls over that stretch. For a player who is 26th among active players in career walks, but fourth among those who have played 10 seasons or less, that’s a sign that something is off.
“The ball sped up on me the first week or two of the season, and I really wasn’t myself,” the 34-year-old said. “I was chasing a lot of stuff and just wasn’t able to recognize it. It’s very uncharacteristic of me.”
But Muncy said he recently pinpointed “the root cause of my struggles.”
Max Muncy Resets Batting Approach to Slow Ball Down
During the offseason and into spring training, Muncy said he focused on being more on top of the ball with his swing, in hopes of producing more liners and hard groundballs. Instead, after an 0-for-4 effort with 3 strikeouts in the Dodgers’ 6-5 win over Washington on April 9, he produced a .174 average with a .224 on-base percentage, walking just three times against 21 strikeouts.
“So this whole last week, it was just trying to hit high fly balls and that allowed me to stay back on my backside and slow the ball down a whole bunch,” Muncy said after Thursday’s game. “I ended up hitting lower trajectories in BP, so it’s funny how that works.”
As long as it works, and in the last four games, Muncy has drawn six walks.
“I’m finally getting the ball back in the zone, taking my walks,” he said. “Just kind of doing what I do best and that’s, you know, see deep counts, get the pitch count up, allow everyone else to be themselves, and for me, it’s a huge thing. Everything else I know will come with that, but for me, the most important thing was getting back to just seeing lots of pitches, getting the ball in the zone, and when the ball’s in the zone, getting good swings at it, and the last three days really felt like myself with that.”
Dodgers Manager Dave Roberts Believes Max Muncy ‘Turned the Corner’
In the Dodgers’ 8-7 win over Colorado on Wednesday, Muncy went 2-for-3 with a walk, scoring a pair of runs with 2 RBIs to help the team improve to 14-6.
“I do think that he’s turned the corner,” Los Angeles manager Dave Roberts said after the game.
“His work’s been good. He’s seeing the ball much better, he’s not as jumpy, not as quick onto his front side. When he’s walking those are good signs.”
Even if Muncy, who ranks ninth in Dodgers history with 190 home runs, has yet to hit his first of 2025.
“I don’t care about the homers as much as I care about just having good at bats,” he said. “I know the homers will come whenever they come, and if they don’t, they don’t. As long as I have good at bats, that’s what I care about, and for me, those first two weeks, I was having pretty terrible at bats, and I was putting my teammates in rough positions, and that’s the last thing I want to do. So for me, just having good at bats, allowing my teammates to be themselves and have their at bats I think for me is huge. I think it’s huge for this team.”
Dodgers’ Veteran Pinpoints ‘Root Cause’ of Season Struggles